My cousin Jimmy's first album, produced by Doug Stegmeyer, Billy Joel's long time bass player.

In spite of the fact that I had spent 100s of hours recording him, I never knew this project was in the works until I saw the CD for sale in a local record store. It seems that Jimmy had called to tell me about it and my wife answered the phone. When she found out what was going on she threatened to skin him alive if he told me as I was in my last semester of graduate school and she knew if I found out I would be spending way too many nights in the recording studio until 3 AM instead of doing the studying I needed to do.

I liked it, but then I may not be the best source of an opinion, because I am a big Ansermet fan and like pretty much all of his readings.

Outside of it being a nice performance it had the typical Decca big wide soundstage. I noticed the horns getting a bit edgy a few times, but I think that is more the sound Stravinsky wanted as opposed to a fault in the recording. When I get a chance I will have to pull out the Mercury and see if the edginess is in that recording as well.

I saw this in Speaker's corner pressing in a record store a while back and passed it by because I have an audiophile pressing of the Dorati Mercury, which is pretty much the gold standard for The Firebird. And then a month or two later I was reading and article in the audiophile press (I think is was one of the Stereophile Records to Die For lists and the Speakers corner was written up saying that even if you have the Mercury you need to get this one too. So I have been keeping an eye out for it and last week saw it in the Academy Records eBay store for a decent price, so I jumped on it. And I am not sorry that I did.

I just found a Wikipedia page about this album. The title Between the Wars refers to the period between World Wars I & II.

Many of the songs contain strong historical references:

"Night Train to Munich": a 1940 film directed by Carol Reed and starring Rex Harrison bears the same title as this song.

"Lindy Comes to Town": the titular figure is Charles Lindbergh, who "comes to town" in a June 13, 1927 "ticker-tape parade". US President Calvin Coolidge is referred to, and the Wall Street Crash of 1929 is ironically hinted at.

"Three Mules": tells of British Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain who did little to prepare Britain for war and downplayed the threat Hitler posed to peace.

"A League of Notions": the title plays on and refers to the formation and earliest acts of the League of Nations at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference in Versailles. Several historical figures are mentioned, including US President Woodrow Wilson, British Prime Lloyd George, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and T. E. Lawrence (here referred to as "Lawrence of Arabia"). The lyrics bemoan the difficulties of establishing new territorial boundaries for Russia, Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Persia and Iraq. Churchill's hiccup is mentioned, as are Wilson's Fourteen Points and Clemenceau's historical remark to Lloyd George that "God Himself had only ten."q:Georges Clemenceau

"Marion the Chatelaine": refers to Marion Davies, the mistress of American newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst.

"Betty Boop's Birthday": an instrumental. Betty Boop was a cartoon character popular in the 1930s; in 1933, she appeared in the short film Betty Boop's Birthday Party.

"Joe the Georgian": Tells of Soviet officers waiting in Hell for Joseph Stalin, the titular Georgian, to arrive. "We're sharpening our pitchforks/And we're heating up the ends," the narrator declares, adding that he hopes Stalin "likes the next few million years." The second verse invokes the metaphor of a literal "ship of state", referring to Vladimir Lenin as "the captain" who became sick, whereupon Stalin, the "mate", took over. Soviet historical figures Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev and Nikolai Bukharin are described as already being in amongst those waiting in the "anteroom to Hell".

"Always the Cause": about the Spanish Civil War. Dolores Ibarruri, "La Pasionara", is mentioned, as is her slogan ‘No pasarαn!. The narrator declares that "Tonight I saw Guernica burn."

"The Black Danube": an instrumental. The Danube River originates in Germany's Black Forest.